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Paul sighed as he settled himself on the couch for another long, sleepless night. It was the second time in the space of a week, and it was getting harder to deal with. He was almost constantly tired and even Ted was giving him concerned looks over the amount of coffee he was drinking in an attempt to stay awake.
But it was still better than dealing with the night terrors. So on the nights that he knew they were coming, Paul bundled himself into a fuzzy blanket on the couch and mainlined his guilty pleasure television show.
He was half-way through his next episode when quiet footsteps padded down the stairs. "Uncle Paul, what are you doing up?" There was a long pause. "And what are you watching?"
He hit pause on the remote, then glanced over at the foot of the stairs where Richie was standing in his pajamas, hair sticking up in all directions and what looked like the beginnings of dark circles under his eyes. "You all right, Richie?"
"Just can't sleep, that's all. I'm fine." Richie ran a hand through his hair, then wrapped his arms around himself in a hug.
Paul was fairly sure that Richie was lying, but he didn't see the point in pressing him just yet. Instead, he shifted around to make room on the couch. "I can't sleep either. Want to watch some mindless TV with me?"
Richie nodded and curled himself on the other end of the couch before waving a hand at the TV. "Seriously, what on earth are you watching?"
Paul sighed, then resumed the episode. "Cutthroat Kitchen. It's a cooking competition show."
"Does that guy have a potato masher taped to his hand?"
"Yes." They watched the episode in silence for a few minutes before Paul spoke again, keeping his eyes on the TV and away from Richie. "Want to talk about why you can't sleep?"
For a long moment Richie was silent. "It's just nightmares. Or, well...just one nightmare, over and over again. That's all." He shifted around on the couch, tucking his feet under him and curling into an even tighter ball. "I'm sure it's nothing."
Paul closed his eyes, biting back a curse. That sounded a little too much like his own current problems for his comfort. He took a deep breath, then glanced over at Richie out of the corner of his eye. "It might help to talk about it, you know. I'm here to listen."
Richie shifted around a bit more, finally pulling his legs up and wrapping his arms around his knees. "It always starts at the same place. I'm in the locker room during the big game with Clivesdale, and I'm all alone. Then Max, who's dead and some sort of vengeful ghost comes in, terrorizes me and chases me all around the locker room. Then he murders me." He paused, audibly trying to hide a sniffle. "And it hurts, so much. And no one even notices that I'm gone, and that hurts, too."
"Oh, Richie." Paul abandoned his blanket and reached out to pull Richie into a hug. "I'm so sorry."
Richie sniffled again, tucking his head under Paul's chin. "I just don't understand. Max is fine; he's even been nicer ever since we saved his life. Nothing bad happened at the big game, either. We even beat Clivesdale. I don't know where all this is coming from." He huffed out a broken sounding laugh. "And sometimes when I look in a mirror my reflection looks like a corpse. Once I even thought I saw ghost Max standing behind me in the mirror and leering at me."
Paul winced, tightening his arms around Richie. "I don't have any definite answers, kiddo. I wish I did. But, I do have a theory."
"A theory's better than nothing." Richie pulled back slightly, but stayed tucked under one of Paul's arms.
"Hatchetfield is, for lack of a better word, weird. Things happen here that just don't happen anywhere else, people go missing all the time...the whole town is just strange. Right?"
Richie frowned. "Well, yeah. But what does that have to do with anything?"
"I think in Hatchetfield sometimes things that didn't happen here but did happen in some other version of the town sort of...." Paul paused, biting his lip as he tried to find the words he wanted. "Sort of phase in temporarily and sometimes you can see them. If that makes sense?"
"Like a multiverse?" Richie perked up a bit, then wilted at the implications. "So you're saying in an alternate timeline we didn't manage to save Max, and he turned into a murderous ghost and killed me? And somehow I'm reliving that Richie's death in my sleep?"
"Yes?" Paul reached up to gently ruffle Richie's hair. "It was the only theory that I could come up with that didn't include me having a complete mental breakdown, so I decided to run with it."
Richie suddenly twisted around so he could meet Paul's eyes. "This is happening to you, too? Someone killed an alternate Paul?"
Paul grimaced, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Amazingly enough, I think death would have been kinder." He opened his eyes, looking up towards the ceiling so he wouldn't have to see Richie's face. "I can feel something taking over my body, puppeting me around and forcing me to sing about my deepest fears. Then it makes me hurt the people I care about, and all I can do is watch and scream inside my own head."
"That sounds like it fucking sucks, Uncle Paul." Richie threw himself forward and pulled Paul into another hug.
"Yeah, it does, Richie." Paul chuckled, but the sound was wet and just a little bit broken. "It definitely fucking sucks." He didn't mention what he sometimes saw in the mirror: softly glowing blue tears sliding down his reflection's cheeks, while a terrifying, beatific smile curled his lips. Or how sometimes his reflection started mouthing song lyrics that Paul could actually hear in his own head.
Instead, he sat there on the couch with Richie's head tucked under his chin once again, and tried to shove the nightmares back into the box in his head. Tried to focus on the sound of Richie's slightly wheezy breathing, instead of the quiet music that was starting to echo in his ears. He forced himself to focus on comforting his trembling nephew, so he wouldn't give in to the now-familiar urge to flee to the bathroom and stick his fingers down his throat to expel alien spores that weren't even there.
None of it had actually happened to him, or to Richie, and hopefully by the time the sun rose they would both be able to put the nightmares behind them. For a little while, at least.